


How two u2e a 2econd chance - a guiide

by iopeneditbeforechristmas



Series: brand new day [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Multi, do i have an excuse? no, post-upd8, upd8, will i continue? yes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-16
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-06-02 14:15:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6569443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iopeneditbeforechristmas/pseuds/iopeneditbeforechristmas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sollux doesn't know how he got from the dream bubbles to this annoying new human world. He doesn't know how his dead friends did either, and there's a small selfish part of him that wishes they hadn't. Not because he wishes terrible fates upon all of them - well, okay, maybe on some - but because now he's faced with the resurgence of feelings he's quite enjoyed not having for the past three years, both flushed and pitch. Now, instead of living out the rest of living eternity with his moirail, he's spending it cursing his existence and trying to sort out the ridiculous mess his quadrants have become instead. </p><p>Featuring: ridiculous displays of pale affection, black flirting so bad they should both be arrested, make-ups, break-ups, and a lot of yelling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How two u2e a 2econd chance - a guiide

Quite how he’s suddenly ended up in a universe filled with bubbly happy friends and their alien romantic partners, Sollux doesn’t know. One minute he was in the dream bubbles, doing whatever the fuck he was supposed to be doing in the dream bubbles because at this point he can’t even remember and doesn’t really care, and the next minute he’s blinking in sunlight way too bright for a half-blind troll and staring at a brand new world that doesn’t even look 2D.

He feels like he should be happy. Aradia is, but he hasn’t actually seen much of her lately, because she’s been too busy flitting around – how does someone _flit,_ even if they have wings it’s still something no one with feet and a more-than-bird-sized brain shouldn’t be able to – and so Sollux has been regulated to moodily stalking around this new universe and trying not to incinerate anyone with his psionics. It’s not that he hates it. It’s just that the dream bubbles were nice and peaceful. He could catch up with all his old friends, or not catch up with them, as the case with certain seadwellers might be, mess around with Aradia on her quest to destroy the big green skeleton guy, catch up with Karkat and Terezi and the others on the meteor whenever they decided to drop by, and most importantly; if he didn’t want to do anything he could just find another dream bubble and chill with Gamzee’s freaky dancestor. It was kind of nice, being able to stew in complete silence. There were several creepy stares involved, and occasionally his former matesprit would come over and Sollux would be forced to abscond or suffer through a detailed analysis of every quadratic relationship he’d ever thought about on a level worse than Nepeta, but it wasn’t all it bad. Mostly it was good.

Now he has to deal with shit like this.

“I remember you!” says the alien in front of Sollux. His skin’s darker than any of the other aliens Sollux has met before – Rose and Dave’s were like paper which was fucking weird, but this guy’s more like…actually Sollux doesn’t know because even now his mind is still stuck on _not-grey how fucking weird is that,_ but it’s definitely darker and definitely still weird. He has dark hair that sticks up almost as bad as Karkat’s, rectangular glasses hiding brilliantly green eyes and a smile that’s fucking blinding. When they said smiles could be blinding Sollux always thought they were being really facetious, but apparently they exist.

“Great,” Sollux says. “I don’t remember you which would probably be really unfortunate if I cared, but I don’t.”

The other alien, who appears to be in some sort of unspecified cahoots with this one, snorts. He has hair that’s even fucking worse; honestly one has to wonder if this species is aware of the concept of hairbrushes because they’re at the stage where if Sollux introduced them to one he’d probably be hailed as the messiah.

“No, no,” says the alien, because he seems just determined to be the worst. “You’re Mr Erisolsprite!”

Sollux stares. There isn’t actually anything else he can do, because his body seems to have shut down.

“I’m sorry, what the fuck?” says another voice, and _fuck_ Sollux really hates his life. And that accent.

“So are you!” the alien grins, like this is just the best thing that’s happened to him ever. “Wow, it sure is nice to meet you both again! And in your own different bodies no less! That’s just spectacular.”

“Thanks,” says Sollux, “I’m going to-”

“Wait,” Eridan says, because his hobby is fucking shit up. “We were a sprite? How did that even happen?”

“I don’t know, apparently your friend the clown made you. I was under the impression that you kind of hated yourself, actually.”

“That comes as absolutely zero surprise,” Sollux mutters, and walks off, because he’s just realised that himself is not the only person he hates. He tries to think reassuring thoughts that, rationally, it’s perfectly logical to behave like this; discovering that your body ended up prototyped with that of the the troll who killed most of your friends and almost single-handedly destroyed whatever hope remained for your race is something that would give rise to confusion and despair in any troll.

What is less than normal is a sudden reprise of every calignous feeling you’ve ever harboured for him.

***

“Well,” Aradia says, when she finally stops for the day and sits down at Sollux’s feet. “I don’t think there’s that much of a problem here.”

“AA, how can you say there’s not a problem? I’m regressing. I’m becoming even more shrivelled and fucked-up than before which is kind of saying something and also the troll in question is ED which is just gross.”

“Well, how?”

“He half-killed me, then he killed my sort-of-maybe-matesprit, then Kanaya, and kind of fucked up the rest of our session. By himself.”

“Well, Gamzee had a hand in that too. I think you’re giving him a hard time. We spent three years in the dream bubbles and you didn’t talk to him _once._ ”

“That’s because he’s an awful person, AA.”

“Sollux, I’m going to have to point out that your definition of awful person is kind of screwed-up.”

“Okay but I still think I deserve a little more sympathy. Can we go do ridiculously pale things in front of him?”

“Sollux, you’re being petty.”

Sollux does his best impression of a pout, which never works on Aradia except to make her laugh, but right now that’s what he’s going for.

“Actually,” she continues, “I think the best revenge would be to go find Feferi and solicit her into the most flushed relationship that’s ever existed and then go be red in front of Eridan! But that would just be mean. And it would probably complicate things a lot.”

“Yeah. Let’s just do the pale stuff.”

“Okay.”

***

Eridan seems rudely unperturbed by Sollux and Aradia’s continued pale shenanigans, and instead continues to mope, much in the way that Sollux is doing. Eridan’s moping, however, involves less scowling and more…pouting. Less petty flaunting of the one stable quadrant he doesn’t even have, and more consistently avoiding Feferi and bugging Kanaya for advice.

Sollux would feel indignant that Eridan’s ignoring his sort-of-not-really matesprit, but every time he sees her Sollux will dive around the corner and pretend he hasn’t, troll Aradia and get her to collect him _riight fuckiing now aa plea2e thii2 ii2 iimportant_ and then abscond faster than the Vriska when faced with consequences.

So he kind of rules that one out of his list of things Eridan can be blamed for.

It’s good, then, that there are a lot of things Eridan can be blamed for.

Like constantly bugging Kanaya. It’s got to the point where Rose is contemplating an intervention, according to Karkat, and even everyone else is getting a little annoyed.

Or soliciting Vriska in the black quadrant – which, come on, if Sollux is constantly freaking out about this Eridan should be too – and incurring Terezi’s wrath. No one really knows where that one’s coming from because according to literally everyone who was on the meteor the Scourge Sisters were the most sickeningly pale is it possible to get, so Vriska expanding into spades shouldn’t worry her moirail that much, but everyone who was on the meteor also agrees that Terezi and Vriska’s relationship is really fucking weird. So Sollux doesn’t really want to go there; instead he’ll get irrationally irritated about Eridan’s involvement in the whole thing and then refuse to wonder why he’s continually obsessing over Eridan.

Who is completely refusing to be jealous about the fucking awesome moirallegiance he and Aradia have got going on.

It’s hard work, all this pale stuff, especially when your moirail is insisting on helping to run literally every aspect of your new planet and you don’t have the heart to tell her to stop, _and_ you’re not even accomplishing the entire point of this PDPA, or public displays of pale affection.

Sollux doesn’t have the heart for a lot of things, including keeping this up for much longer or thinking coherently about any of this mess.

It’s probably why, about four days after he first fucked this up, he decides to go and seek out Feferi.

She’s sitting by the lake, which in where they’ve settled down is the closest thing any of them have to the sea, and smiling.

“Uh,” Sollux says, scratching the back of his head awkwardly. “Hey, FF.”

“Shoallux!” she says, looking up and grinning. Here’s someone else whose smile could possibly be described as blinding. Her teeth are just so _white._ And really fucking sharp, too. He forgot that. “What are you doing here?”

“Uhh…okay this is sort of something I probably shouldn’t be asking you but…Eridan. How do you feel about him?”

Feferi sighs. It’s a long, deep, drawn-out sigh, the kind of sigh with years’ worth of feelings behind it, and Sollux really hates himself for bringing it out of her.

“I…I really don’t know, Sollux. Why are you asking?”

“Because I kind of feel pitch for him and…yeah okay that’s bad enough I’m not even going to try and pile more shit on that.”

“No, I get it,” Feferi says. “I mean, you guys would make a really good kismessitude!”

“Really? Because I kind of thought ED was always too much of the jealous type to make a proper one. One hateful look at someone else and you have the entire Ampora bloodline on your ass kind of thing.”

“I don’t know, I think it could work!”

“Feferi, are you encouraging me to do this? Like, actually engage Eridan Ampora in a calignous solicitation?”

“We-ell…I can see why you’d think that was kind of weird! But I don’t know, I think maybe it’s time to forgive and forget. We have this whole new planet now, and that’s really cool. And we’re alive again! I don’t want to ruin this time too.”

“What even happened between you two in the dream bubbles? Actually scratch that, I don’t even want to know. It was probably weird and involved a lot of feelings jams and there’s only so much of me that can stick all that pale shit.”

“You’d be surprised,” Feferi says sadly. “I don’t think we talked that much. These versions of us, anyway. I think there was one Eridan auspistising between me and Kanaya at one point!”

“May come as a surprise, FF, but I’d have been exactly the same person without knowing that. Probably a better one, actually. No, definitely a better one.”

“At least you didn’t have to see it! That was really weird. I think Eridan avoided me even more after that. There were a lot of really big unresolved relationship issues between us, and I’d have talked about them! But Eridan’s never really been any good at that.”

“Yeah. Well. We all did a lot of avoiding in the dream bubbles. I did.”

“Mm. I think this might be one of the first times we’ve properly talked since I died.”

“Yeah. You know, I – I’m really sorry about all that. The whole…just, everything, actually.”

“It’s okay, Sollux! You didn’t do anything, and you apologised anyway, which is kind of not what you’re supposed to do right now.

“Yeah, well, I don’t really know what I’m supposed to do anyway, so if you could tell me that would be really great.”

“I don’t know, silly. I don’t think I’ve ever had to properly worry about calignous relationships. Just…a lot of flushed and pale ones.”

“Heh, yeah, you really hit that opposite of the matespritship money pile there. Thanks, FF. For the talk, and stuff.”

“No problem! Good luck, Sollux. I expect you to tell me exactly what you decide to do first. Well, after Aradia, of course. So first of your friends, okay?”

“Sure, FF. See you around.”

Sollux waves goodbye to Feferi and leaves, reasoning that if Feferi thinks it’s okay to at least _talk_ to Eridan, he might as well give it a go.

That still doesn’t really explain why he marches over to where Eridan is talking with Karkat and Dave, both of whom seem either willing to forgive or don’t care, Sollux can’t really tell which, and then kisses him with as much force a scrawny goldblood can muster against a six-foot seadweller. Predictably, things only get worse from there.

**Author's Note:**

> i have never written literally any of these characters before, so this was an experience. also i've decided not to do feferi and fish puns unless they're in a pesterlog because i'm bad at them and they kind of mess up what she says sometimes. next chapters will probably be longer? idk. hit me up on tumblr at phyrradise if you want to fangirl or drop me an ask or something.


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